Gee's Bend Quilts, Other Black Textile Artists, In Bridgeport

On the Cover

City Lights Gallery Honors Black History Month

As a child, Loretta Pettway Bennett watched her grandmother, mother and aunts make quilts. She made her first one at age 12. That's how a lot of girls grew up in Gee's Bend, Alabama. They were taught to recycle worn-out clothes and whatever other scraps they found into the quilts.

The Gee's Bend quilting ladies became legendary when their works were discovered by museum curators. Since 2002, the quilters' freeform, abstract creations, of uneven shapes and uninhibited designs have been exhibited nationwide and have been compared to Henri Matisse and Paul Klee.

When the quilters were becoming known, Bennett really got going on her quilting career, too, weaving in influences from her worldwide travels with the distinctive Gee's Bend style. "I was trying to come up with my own ideas, exploring different colors, bright colors, big pieces," she said.

Four full-sized Gee's Bend quilts, by Bennett and Mary Lee Bendolph, and several smaller pieces are the centerpiece of an exhibit opening Thursday, Feb. 20, at City Lights Gallery in Bridgeport. The exhibit is timed to coincide with Black History Month.

Bridgeport is a fitting place for an exhibit of Gee's Bend quilts. Decades ago, during tough financial times, many Gee's Bend residents moved up north to Bridgeport to find work, and stayed.

The exhibit's curator, Suzanne Kachmar, said in addition to Matisse and Klee, the quilts could be compared to Op art and works by painters Kazimir Malevich and László Moholy-Hagy.

"They look like they're moving or bouncing. By using a simple grid and then distorting the shapes, it gives the quilts personality. When the shapes aren't 100 percent rectangular, you can feel the artist's hand," Kachmar said. "Artists have spent a lot of time coming up with these theories about abstract art being purer than representational art ... like Mondrian's ideas about an orderly and spiritual society. But [the quilters] came to this concept naturally."

Bennett said she sketches her designs out on paper, but that's just a starting point. "I color it in with crayon and if I have that particular color then I would use that color. Or I would just collect pieces and use the color that I had," she said. "I would cut them the way my drawing was and then lay them out and arrange them until I get what I'm looking for."

Kachmar praised the quilts' "great syncopation of colors and shapes."

"Our tendency, visually, is to want order. And they they give us a visual surprise," she said. "It causes us to have feelings about it."

Bendolph is 25 years older than Bennett, and was in that 2002 show that opened the country's eyes to the quilts of Gee's Bend. But that wasn't her first brush with fame.

In 1965, she was among many residents of Gee's Bend who took the ferry from Gee's Bend to Camden with Martin Luther King Jr. to register to vote. As a result, they were arrested, many of them lost their jobs and the ferry service from Gee's Bend to Camden was shut down, not to return until 2006.

"The sheriff said 'we didn't close the ferry because they were black. We closed it because they forgot they were black,'" Kachmar said. "These quilts are important as pieces of art, and they're important in Civil Rights history."

The "Common Threads" exhibit also features the work of other black textile artists, most prominently the large-scale batik quilts of Tunde Odunlade of Nigeria. Other artists are Kofi Ayisi of Kenya, and Connecticut artists Imna Arroyo, Michael Dunham, Aisha Nailah, and wearable art team Jahmane and Jerry Grant.

COMMON THREADS will be at City Lights, 37 Markle Court in Bridgeport, from Thursday, Feb. 20, when it opens with a reception from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., until Friday, March 28. A quilting workshop with Loretta Pettway Bennett will be on Saturday, Feb. 22, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fee to participate in the workshop is $100. Participants are asked to bring their own sewing machines and materials. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Friday 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday noon to 4 p.m. Admission to the gallery is free. Details: citylightsgallery.org.